Western Digital Corp. were dealt a heavy blow this week after a court ruling said that they must pay around $800 million to their rival storage company Seagate. The ruling started in 2012, when Western Digital were asked to pay Seagate $525 million in damages for misappropriating eight specific trade secrets via a former Seagate employee. The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the 2012 appeals court decision and since then, the total award has grown to almost $800 million.
“We are disappointed with the decision of the Minnesota Supreme Court, and we continue to strongly disagree with the arbitrator’s decision. We believe the Hennepin County District Court correctly vacated the award, and that its opinion vacating the Award explains the reasons the Award was improper.” said WD in a statement Wednesday.
Western Digital have stated that the company will be using foreign subsidiaries of cash and cash equivalents, which are held outside of the U.S, to pay Seagate and have promised that this will not have an effect on the companies current operations. Smooth words, but $800 Million in losses certainly has to hurt, although given that they’re the worlds largest hard drive manufacturer, we’re sure they can afford it.
Thank you OCRegister for providing us with this information.
Image courtesy of OCRegister.
Whether they can afford it or not is relative, it’s still a huge chunk of change and will no doubt have some effect on them.